


A Labyrinth in the Sand

by ebonynemesis



Category: Free!
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, M/M, haruka needs a hug, makoharu-freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 02:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonynemesis/pseuds/ebonynemesis
Summary: For Haru, it takes decades for him to find his way.





	A Labyrinth in the Sand

Makoto, legs soft and wobbly like pudding, pudges down next to him.

‘Whatta you doing?’

Small fingers with wrinkled tips reach out for the shallow trenches in the sand, and retract when Haruka’s head snaps up to meet his eyes, Makoto hugs his knees as he crouches there, brows furrowed and olive irises twinkling like the uneven surface of the water dusted with spots of light.

Beyond them, waves froth with opaque foam against the saturated sand.

Haruka doesn’t know how to explain the correlation between the fairytale his mother told him about the brave maiden who dared to breach the labyrinth to either defeat or liberate a monster with only a spool of red thread in her hand and his desire to be in the chasms he has dug that forms the kanji he learnt from the story which means neither bind nor conquest but also both.

He scrubs it away vigorously with his palm. Makoto whimpers at the abrupt, utter destruction.

‘A maze.’ He explains. ‘But this one’s bad, let’s make a good one, together.’  

Makoto’s bottom lip stops quivering, although a tear rolls out of his wet eyes—a lingering remnant of fear.  

 

*

 

His name means distance and he can’t think of a better name for himself, that which identifies the barrier around him—the negative space that sketches his being.  

He finds himself wanting to breach it as he’s floating in the pool with soaked clothes clinging to his limbs and shoes leaden from saturation—to reach beyond the blank space and touch the boy with downturned olive eyes who has overtaken him in height since they entered middle-school, but still cowers at the movement of Haruka’s hands. When he calls him Haru-chan, the impenetrable shield of his name quivers, threatening to give, as if the tenderness of the smile is too heavy to rest atop the bubble of silence around his heart.

Fear chokes as the word which he had written in sand carves its way out from the deep labyrinth within, and Haruka fears, yet longs for the beast to escape.

But then Makoto, clothing as wet and ruined as his own, flops backwards into the water, and the barrier remains intact. The desire to say the word dissolves—seafoam blown apart by stray ocean breeze.

 

*

 

The urge to say it wouldn’t come back until years later, when, after one silent burst of fireworks, Makoto, no longer smiling, pulls his hand out from Haruka’s grasp.

 

*

 

Haruka practices it in front of the bathroom mirror in the foreign hotel: forcing his lips to widen into _‘A’,_ then thinning to form the _‘I’,_ tensing through the _‘Shi’_ , release, then tapping his tongue against his teeth for _‘te’_ and finally pouting so the _‘ru’_ would slip out of his pursed lips, the sound continuous like an ligature of strokes. He repeats it slower, then faster, then slower. Until he hears Rin’s snigger behind him.

‘Didn’t take you for a narcissist.’

But Haruka closes his eyes, and does it again.

Rin sighs before turning away to repack his luggage for their return journey to Japan.

 

*

 

He thought he was prepared, ready.

But instead of the practiced sounds, words with other meanings—apologies and admissions—never managed to give way for the five-syllabled composition. Instead he’s wrapped up in Makoto’s long arms with his face being wetted by tears (Makoto’s) and lips being invaded by another (also Makoto’s) and is suddenly too occupied with other things to speak.

 

*

 

Not just his lips.

After their final year at high-school, long summer months stretch through the gradual explorations of each other’s bodies. Freckles begin populating the previously smooth expanse of Makoto’s toned shoulders and Haruka obsesses over mapping the position of each one as they develop like stars twinkling alive in a golden dusk sky.

Makoto blushes, and shivers, and smiles, at each graze of fingertips and lips against tender sunburnt skin—too delicate and intimate to tear apart with speech.

So Haruka keeps the word to himself throughout the summer, coiled within him, like he’s fermenting it with sunlight.  

 

*

 

He moves to Tokyo, Makoto follows, grasping the seatbelt as he sits in the passenger seat beside Haruka. They walk together, identical foam cups of hot tea in their hands, traversing through the streets of Tokyo lined with concrete and glass. Coffee and dinner and drinks with old friends and new acquaintances, and future blasted open like the gusts of breeze across unobstructed surface of the water whipping in their faces.

In the evening, Makoto’s encircles Haruka’s fingers with his own longer ones as they sit side by side on the tiny balcony of Haruka’s dormitory, and the word tingles upon Haruka’s tongue like a quivering red yarn held tentatively in a maiden’s trembling hand.

Makoto is looking at the stars, commenting on how nice it was to reconcile with Ikuya, reminiscing their middle-school days, then expressing his eagerness at seeing Rin again when he returns to Tokyo.

He’ll never escape his own name, Haruka thinks, the labyrinth which traps the monster. He’s separated from Makoto by invisible distance and the unspoken word that he no longer knows how to annunciate.

 

*

 

Soon, inevitable separation: isolated training and swim meets and more and more time apart.

Makoto accommodates.

Haruka becomes desperate.

 

*

 

His first international competition goes about as disastrously as it can without him actually standing up in the middle of the pool. Still trying to recover, Haruka slips down to sit against the tiled wall, folds his arms across himself, traces his fingers across his own shoulder, remembering Makoto’s skin where he had kissed those freckles that last summer they spent in Iwatobi before college.

Half-dressed in sweatpants with a towel over his head, he opens his phone and types the word into the messenger app, but there’s no coverage for his cellphone in this country and in pixels the kanji looks cheap—a mimickory of the hole it has torn within Haruka’s heart.

Rin walks in the moment he whispers it against his phone.

‘He’s here, you know.’

Haruka’s head whips up.

Rin’s grin is almost maniac, partially from the victory he’s just claimed and partially from the secret he’s managed to keep.

‘He wanted it to be a surprise, but was too afraid to come in after he saw how you went.’

Rin and the room wavering like light beneath water in front of his eyes, as the distorted waves part to reveal Makoto’s worried face at the doorway.

‘I told you he’s fine.’ Rin gives Makoto a shove.

Haruka remembers the first time he had wanted to say the word to him, and the steps Makoto is making are exactly the same as the ones he made towards Haruka on pudding-soft legs in the sand.

Makoto kneels in front of where he’s sitting and tilts his face up gently. Rin is long gone.

‘Why are you here?’ Haruka screws his eyes shut, unable to look at the face in front of him.

Makoto strokes his hair away from his face, ‘Of course I’d be here.’

Haruka grabs those long fingers framing his cheekbones, his mouth quivering, the watery sheen in Makoto’s eyes urging him on.

Makoto searches, his gaze moving across Haruka’s face, and he opens his mouth when Haruka suddenly realises that maybe he’s not the only one with an urge, or an unspoken word weighing against his heart.  

‘You shouldn’t be back here if you’re not a competitor or staff.’ Haruka says, like an idiot.

Makoto stops, eyes widening.

The pain of rejection wreaks across Makoto’s face and it’s enough for Haruka to lose his own breath, Makoto’s lips thin into a line. Haruka feels himself quake apart.

The few inches it takes to breach the distance between them stretch miles wide as Haruka stares at Makoto, the word which Haruka is too afraid to neither speak nor hear swaying between them like a pendulum, ticking away the seconds.

Makoto stands, turns on his heels as he leaves, he stops at the doorway to the changerooms, Haruka has forgotten how to breathe.

‘When you’re ready, ok?’ Makoto says, before he walks away.

Haruka snubs his thumb against a splinter on the wooden bench beneath him until it breaks his skin and makes him bleed.

 

*

 

In the end the labyrinth might not be his to navigate.

The sunlight beating down upon his skin as the sea foams across the beach, Tokyo and that unpleasant competition behind him, growing more distant in his mind, less urgent.

Nagisa and Rei are fighting over a bottle of sunscreen lotion as Makoto unloads the car, his phone buzzes and he knows it’s Rin calling to ask him about the picnic, probably for directions or if they need snacks.

He toes off one of his slippers, traces the word into the sand with his foot, then wipes it away.

Makoto walks towards him, cooler in one hand and watermelon in the other, and Haruka thinks, he’s not there yet, but he’s inching closer, each and everyday, and someday…

Maybe…

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Makoharu Flash Bang 2018](https://makoharubigbang.tumblr.com/) in collaboration with the amazing [@aluckysoandso](https://aluckysoandso.tumblr.com/). Please go check out her other fantastic and expressive MakoHaru artworks.  
> 


End file.
